Pages

Wednesday, 2 October 2013

Osborne's latest unemployment plans

Osborne, being the nasty little Tory he is, has a new
plan to help fight unemployment in this country – demonising the long term
unemployed!

Did I say “new plan”? Because that kind of sounds like the Tory’s old plan. In
fact, it sounds like the Tory’s only plan.

His plan is that long term unemployed will now have to do
full time community service, attend a full time course or go to the job centre
every single day.

So let us count the wrongness

This Demonises the
Unemployed

The Tories are stuck on the idea that the unemployed are
lazy leeches on society – it’s not just a matter of delusion, it’s a lie they
have to tell themselves. The only way they can continue to reshape the country
to make the rich even richer and screw the poor harder and harder is to chant
the mantra that it is the poor’s fault.

The minute you accept that the economy is screwed up
(caused by rich bankers who have had some wonderful welfare in response) and
that even in this time of “recovery” we’re seeing the majority of wealth coalescing
in the hands of the rich while the standard of living for everyone else drops
along-side earnings and benefits then we have to start questioning our system –
and whether all the Tory cronies really need things like a cut to the upper
rate of tax.

The Tories need to demonise the unemployed to maintain
their myth of society and justify their cruel, selfish actions. This proposal
is just another extension of that.

It Doesn’t Create
Jobs

It doesn’t matter what you do to the unemployed, if there
are no jobs then they can’t work. It’s that simple, especially in places
outside the south-east (yes, Londoners, there are places outside the
south-east). It doesn’t matter what new plans Osborne conjures up to torment
and attack them, the unemployed cannot get jobs if there are no jobs to get –
or 1 job among 20 applicants.

It Actively
Hinders Job Search

Job hunting takes time, it takes energy and it’s
emotionally highly damaging. Forcing pointless, time consuming tasks with an
added level of demonization on job seekers for extra morale destruction does
not help. Leaving people tired, dispirited and too busy to find work is the
very opposite of help

It Will Cost Money

When the job centre requires an unemployed person to
attend a course outside their normal signing day, the job centre pays the
transport costs. When you consider that an unemployed person is paid about £70
a week in dole, you see how important that is – especially if travelling to
wherever we’re forcing them to go costs £5 or more (the amount it would cost me
to get a return bus ticket into town). Now consider forcing all these
unemployed into a daily commute. You will have to pay transport for that.

If you’re going to have all these people round the
country forced to attend a job centre every day, then those job centres are
going to need more staff (oops, you’re cutting job centre staff? Well that’s
not going to work). They’re going to need more security (and since the
government uses G4S that’s going to cost even more after G4S screws them on the
contract!). And that’s before we consider they’re going to need more facilities
if we want to maintain the pretence of it being helpful.

This will be expensive.

There will be LESS
Jobs

Just like with Workfare, if you start forcing unpaid
labour then the Tory’s ever-so-special “job creators” then you reduce the
number of actual, paid jobs available. It’s simple logic. A job needs filling.
It can be filled by someone you have to pay or it can be filled by the
unemployed for no money. Which is going to be chosen?

And that “volunteer” position is deceptive – because in
this era of cuts, we’re seeing both charities being forced to step in to fill
in care that should be provided by services. It’s a shifting of workforce from
paid labour to unpaid volunteers. The same applies to that “community service”,
for every unemployed person you force into this scheme, that’s a council worker
who is not needed.

Hey, the councils could sack workers, watch them collect
unemployment benefit, then force them back into work with no pay! Think of the
savings!

Ultimately, the Tories can’t do anything about
unemployment until they change their philosophy on the unemployed – and the
poor in general. But the Tories cannot do that without changing the very nature
of their party.